You’re listening to KABC 790. This is Matt Matern host of Unite and Heal America. My guest is Nick Lapis Director of Advocacy from the organization Californians Against Waste. Welcome to the show, Nick.

Thanks for having me. Matt,

Tell us a little bit about Californians Against Waste and what your organization does and how you, you ended up there.

Yeah, so California dance waste is an environmental advocacy organization, we’ve been around since 1977. Originally really focused almost exclusively on passing a bottle deposit in California. So the five cents or 10 cents you pay when you go buy some soft drinks. We call that the bottle bill. And that was really the focus of the organization for probably the first 10 years or so.

And then, after we successfully passed the bottle bill in California, we moved on to a lot of other waste related issues. Everything from you know how to handle products like tires, or, you know, electronic waste to more recently, we’ve been very focused on plastic pollution, and the organic waste, so food scraps and yard trimmings, and getting that composted.

It’s kind of a wide variety of issues, that are all related around waste management and recycling. And as for me, personally, I’ve been with the organization for 14 years at this point, straight out of college. And yeah, I studied environmental science and at UC Davis and got a job at CW never left,

Go Aggies. So, yeah, I work with a couple of UC Davis grads, and it’s a great school. It’s kind of interesting. I’m a little bit older than you. And so I remember the bottle deposits coming into play, and I didn’t remember exactly the date. But I guess that kind of refreshes my memory that it’s been whatever it was late 70s, early 80s, when they first came into play 1986 is when that the state law was passed. Wow.

So prior to that, was there no return policy in terms of payment?

No, I mean, individual, you know, maybe like an individual milk company might have some kind of deposit or something. But there was nothing statewide.

Yeah, cuz I kind of recall that you got a nickel or something when you brought up a Pepsi bottle or Coke bottle back to a store or something like that. But I guess it wasn’t for every product, or every type of can or bottle? Well, we’ve come a long way since then, but we still got a long way to go. And I know that. You know, there.

There’s some bills in the legislature right now about reducing plastic waste. And Senator Bell, Bill. Ben Allen has a bill that is pending in the California state legislature about reducing plastics by boys 75%. Maybe you could tell us a little bit about that one, and, and what your role has been in, in helping that legislation?

Sure. I mean, we’ve seen increased interest from the legislature over the last few years in this issue. And I think that’s sort of a reflection of the public really beginning to care about this issue. You know, as more and more research comes out, that shows that, you know, they’re finding plastic in, in seafood, they’re finding plastic and drinking water, they’re finding plastic in the human body. I think there was a study that came out this week that showed there was a plastic in human lungs. Recent research showing that bits of plastic can cross the placental barrier.

And so I think all of that has sort of forced a reckoning or the public has said, What are you doing about it? And I think the answer of, well, we dealt with one product. And now we’re gonna move on to another product just doesn’t really cut it, because we’re going to, you know, win the battle but lose the war. And so we’ve been strong supporters, those individual product bills, whether it’s bags or plastic microbeads, we sponsored both of those bills, or, you know, the straw bill.

But I think where Senator Allen came in, and some of his colleagues came in is that they said, We need a comprehensive solution to actually move the needle. We need to look at the problem as a whole, not just go product by product. And so, Senator Allen and Assemblymember Gonzales introduced identical measures in the last session, to basically give the state authority to regulate plastics and packaging It’s kind of in my mind, similar to the way we regulate anything else. That’s a hard problem.

You know, comes to air quality, we allow the Air Resources Board to pass regulations to address that when it comes to worker health and safety. We allow Cal OSHA to pass regulations to address that. It’s more or less how we handle any complicated problem. And this is a complicated problem. And it just didn’t really make sense to keep going product by product, and the legislature. So those bills stalled last year, they did not get enough votes at the end of either year of the legislative session.

It came very close, I think it was four votes shy last year, but ultimately did not pass. And Senator Allen has reintroduced a bill as sort of a placeholder to have that conversation. It’s the same bill numbers, SB 54. But for us, and for a lot of folks, we’re really focused on a ballot measure we’ve been working on, which sort of is a similar concept, but it’s going on the statewide ballot next year. So it’ll be on the November election next year.

And there’s a large signature gathering effort last summer that was delayed because of COVID. And, you know, there were some extensions grant and some other procedural things that aren’t super interesting, but we expect to qualify to officially be told that we qualify for the ballot in the next couple of weeks.

And tell us a little bit about the ballot measure and what that’s going to entail.

Yeah, so as a few main pieces, in my mind, the biggest most important part of it is the what I just described, which was in, you know, SB 54, which is an AB 1080. Basically authority to the Environmental Protection Agency, to come up with standards to make sure all packaging is recyclable or compostable. You know, that’s the heart of the ballot measure.

In addition to that, there is a prohibition on the sale of expanded polystyrene. So also known as Styrofoam, takeout containers.

We have, I believe, 139 local, local governments that have passed bans, but there isn’t one statewide and that’s you know, as much as I don’t like going product by product, that’s an especially problematic material. Because it’s so lightweight, it you know, even when dispose of properly blows out of garbage trucks, blows out of trash cans.

And it’s has toxic ingredients. And notably, stiring, the main ingredient is a carcinogen. So it’s not recyclable, not realistically recyclable. It, even if it were the aerodynamics of it problematic, and then it’s also toxic. So it prohibits the sale of that, which again, would only affect about half the state because half the state has already banned it over the years. And then the third part of the ballot measure is a fee assessed on the manufacturers of single use products.

And it’s up to a penny per item of packaging. And that’s it’s up to a penny but based on how much it costs to recycle the product. So if a product isn’t recyclable and costs to ratepayers, a ton of money to deal with, when that manufacturer will be assessed the full Penny, if it’s something that’s really easy to recycle, like say a PT, water bottle or something along those lines, it will be way less than a penny.

And then that money is used for a variety of things. So recycling, composting infrastructure. Also investments in cleaning beaches and parks and a lot of natural resources investments, investments and food recovery and food banks and sustainable agriculture. It is probably the most aggressive investment we’ve seen in California’s environment in recent memory, and on top of the the regulatory side.

Well, it certainly seems reasonable and fair to ask the manufacturers and and retailers who are using these products that are ending up you know, needing to be disposed of and are costly to dispose of and are harmful to our environment that they pay kind of the price for that that cost that they’re passing down to the rest of us. So that really they’re they’re bearing the true cost of the problem.

And then that will hopefully get them to modify their behavior. I wonder if, if the one cent per product is sufficient to to actually dissuade manufacturers and retailers who use these products from from using them going forward? What do you think?

I mean, it’s a good question, since it’s only part of the much bigger policy. I think the rest of the the proposal kind of complements it to transition us to recyclable compostable alternatives. It’s not we’re not just counting on the penny to do the whole job.

Well, you’re listening to Unite and Heal America and KABC 790. This is Matt Matern, your host and we’re talking to Nick Lapis Director of Advocacy for Californians Against Waste. We’re going to be back with Nick in just one minute to talk about the ballot measure he and his organization are planning to have on the November 2022 ballot, which is going to really revolutionize the way we deal with the with products here in California and possibly the rest of the country. Because California has traditionally led the way on these issues. We’ll be back in just one minute.

As you may know, your host Matt Matern of Unite and Heal America is also the founder of Matern Law Group, their team of experienced employment, consumer and environmental attorneys are dedicated to leveling the playing field by giving everyone access to the highest quality legal representation contact 844 MLG for you, that’s 844 MLG for you, or 84465449688446544968.

You’re listening to KABC 790. This is Matt Matern, your host of Unite and Heal America. Our guest today, Nick Lapis from the Californians Against Waste. He’s the Director of Advocacy and has been so for 14 years. Nick, you’re telling us a bit about the ballot measure your organization is putting forward? I was asking about how this is going to work with, you know, manufacturers, Will this really dissuade them? And you were about to tell us a little bit about how you think the structure the measure would do that?

Yeah, so the fee is a part of it. And really, it’s you’ve got it exactly right. It’s about shifting the costs from residents, from ratepayers to the manufacturers helping internalize some of those costs. So the fees part of it, but the in my opinion, the most important part of the ballot measure is the regulatory authority that we’re giving the state Environmental Protection Agency. And basically, we’re telling them make require packaging to be recyclable or compostable.

And it’s not that crazy of a concept. I mean, if you think about some types of packaging, we’re already there, if you think about beverage containers, for example, you know, he walked down the aisle at the supermarket. And whether it’s, you know, coke, or Pepsi, or Dr. Pepper, they all use recyclable, PT bottles, recyclable glass bottles, recyclable aluminum cans, they’re recyclable across brands. So you can take an aluminum can from coke and recycle it with a Pepsi aluminum can.

And, you know, from a consumer perspective, you’re still choosing the product you want. And there are multiple forms of packaging for it. But all of them are compatible with the systems that we have. And so I would argue the beverage sector isn’t almost 100% recyclable. And not all of it gets recycled, you know, but we do get really high recycling rates, and that, you know, 70s and 80s for that material.

And what if the rest of packaging could look like that, where the rest of packaging could be uniform enough that it could be recycled together that we wouldn’t have to, you know, hope that some wacky, you know, clamshell that some toys using would somehow be compatible with a system that’s not designed for it. What if, you know, maybe toys aren’t the best example.

But what if toys all came in uniform packaging, similar with other food items with you know, other household items. So in my mind, it’s really about making it easier for consumers. So that pretty much every choice is recyclable, so they don’t have to stand over their trash can the recycling bin trying to read the numbers at the bottom of their products? Try remember what the hell their city actually accepts or doesn’t accept. The system needs to be simpler, and I think that, in my mind is the ultimate outcome of the ballot measure.

Well, certainly I didn’t even know the herd hadn’t even noticed on those triangles are the that are on the recycle bulls, the seven or eight different numbers that denote the different types of classifications that products that fall into that are plastic or recyclable. And then of course, there’s the differentiation of whether they’re really going to be recycled.

And we’ve had the question that many of them are not being recycled. So we kind of have this sense of the date. If we throw something in the recycling bin that has that circle. We’re okay. But in reality, I don’t think that’s accurate. Is that Is that a fair statement?

Yeah, it’s totally fair statement. It’s actually the focus of several bills this year in the legislature. And, you know, I think that there’s a tendency for the public to blame consumers for not knowing. But it’s intentionally confusing. Any manufacturers love the green sheen of their product being considered recyclable. And so they go out of their way to use, you know, the chasing arrows recycling symbol, in a way that makes people think that it’s recyclable, even if it isn’t. So there’s a few different bills on this, like I said, one would actually prohibit the use of the chasing arrows recycling symbol, or the word recyclable, on any packaging that doesn’t actually have recycling markets.

So it’s not enough that it goes into a blue bin, because that’s not recycling. It’s got to actually be made into new products. So that’s a big area of eliminating what I think is deceptive greenwashing by manufacturers. And then similarly, I mean, as you mentioned, a lot of stuff that goes in the blue bin doesn’t actually get recycled. So there’s legislation that a previous guy mentioned was that SB 343 By Senator Allen. There’s another bill that’s a V 881 by Sombra, Lorena Gonzalez, that basically reclassifies mixed plastic waste that we shipped overseas reclassifies that as disposal.

So we don’t magically count it as recycling because we put in a shipping container, if it doesn’t really have a place to go, if it doesn’t really get recycled. So that’s all part of this theme of being honest with consumers about what isn’t isn’t recyclable, which we need to do from a fairness perspective, but also to not let the manufacturers off the hook. Because they claim that their products are recyclable. And that affects the consumer choices, as consumers want to buy the recyclable option.

And then the third bill that’s in that same vein, is an ad 1212 01. By September filtering, which does something similar for compostable labeling. It basically limits what can be called compostable, make sure that it really can be composted in California, so it doesn’t have toxic ingredients. It meets the ASTM standards for breaking down. It is third party certified. It’s labeled in a way that’s not confusing to consumers.

And so yeah, so all of those bills kind of go together in this general sense of let’s be more transparent about what isn’t, isn’t recyclable. And let’s make it easier for consumers to know what goes in what bin. And then let’s move away from the things that are not recyclable.

Well, you talked about a lot of things being shipped out of the country. And I saw recently, an article about all the trash, we are still shipping to Southeast Asia. And to me, I think that’s just pushing off the problem to somebody else and creating another problem on the other side of the planet, which is still our problem, because we only have one planet and all this stuff cycles back into whether it’s the ocean or in the ground, we’re going to still have to deal with that problem somewhere down the road. And it’s to me it’s a short term solution. How are we going to deal with that one?

Yeah, you’re exactly correct. And that’s that’s really the point of reclassifying that as disposal. Because really, the there isn’t much economic incentive for people to ship worthless stuff overseas, they do it to meet recycling targets. You know, every city has to recycle half of the waste that they generate, and putting stuff in a shipping container counts, and so reclassifying that as disposal is going to eliminate a big part of that incentive.

And there are some products that are legitimately your recycled overseas, but it’s not the mixed, mixed leftover plastic. That stuff is pretty much garbage. And, you know, historically, it’s been hand sorted overseas, and people have picked out the stuff that we mix that we miss in there. So maybe some, you know, bottles or jugs that are recyclable, and they get kind of hand sorted.

But they don’t have the infrastructure to deal with the rest of it, which is the majority. And if it’s getting thrown away, you know, I best case scenario if it’s getting landfilled overseas, worst case scenario, if it’s ending up directly back in the ocean, or, you know, being used as stove fuel in somebody’s house where it’s toxic. None of that should count as recycling. And that’s really the impetus for AB eight one.

So where do we go in terms of just kind of eliminating this waste or eliminating it through having better packaging up options, so that we’re not creating this disposable culture that leads to so much waste and so much pollution?

Yeah, part of it is is redesigning the packaging to make it more consistent, make it make it more aligned with our existing recycling system so that we can recycle it. That’s part of the problem or part of the solution. But the other part is really going back to more reuse and refillable systems. My pet peeve is, you know, every time you go into a coffee shop, they give you your coffee to go whether or not you’re drinking it there or not.

And if you go into the same coffee shop, you know, the same chain, Starbucks or whatever. In Europe, you’ll see that they serve everything in a in a porcelain cup. And people are sitting around drinking coffee out of cups, as opposed to paper to go cups. And I think stuff like that is just such a low hanging fruit, like that’s not going to cost anybody any money. That’s not going to be less convenient for the consumer. We really need to tackle that lowest hanging fruit as well.

Well, not only is it low hanging fruit to for recycling benefits or waste reduction benefits, it actually tastes better out of a porcelain cup than out of a plastic cup. And so I challenge those who drink coffee to to use a non plastic or disposable cup when they when they fill up but you’re listening to Unite and Heal America KABC 790. Again, my guest Nick Lapis, Director of Advocacy for Californians Against Waste. We’re taking a break right now we’ll be right back in just a minute to talk with Nick some more.

You’re listening to KABC 790 This is Matt Matern, the host of Unite and Heal America. And again, my guest Nick Lapis, Californians Against Waste. And Nick, I just wanted to ask you about this, blame the consumer model, which is kind of been set up by industry for a long time, which has been the focus of, of recycling is on the consumer to make sure that the consumer does their part to throw things away, when in reality, the much more effective way to look at this problem or solve this problem is to go to the source and have products that that don’t cause so much pollution. And so we have less waste. What are we doing to get to the source here?

You’re exactly right. There’s a interesting documentary that came out a couple of years ago called The Story of plastic, I highly recommend you go watch it. I, I know the Discovery Channel bought it, I don’t know where they’re streaming it, but I’m sure you can stream it somewhere. But they really go into a lot of detail on this and how, you know, originally, when when some of these chemical companies launch Disposable single use items, they had a really hard time convincing people to throw them out because people would wash them and reuse them.

But that’s not how their market would work. You know, you can’t have a market of selling single use items that people are going to reuse. And so they had to do full on educational campaigns telling people to throw away the disposable stuff that they were buying. And you know, they mark it as like the the wave of the future is here in the 50s. And the wave of the future is that you don’t have to do dishes anymore. You can just throw it all away.

But they actively had to fight for that culture change, because it seems so foreign to people. And then, you know, the other thing you mentioned is, again, the responsibility on the consumer When there started to be a pushback against all of the disposable stuff, and all the litter and everything that was people were seeing, the manufacturer sort of got together and put a lot of money in to public education campaigns that really redirected the message from, you’re making stuff that is getting, you know, that’s problematic, redirect from that to consumers need to pick up their litter.

It’s a consumer problem. And you know, the notorious example of the crying Indian Keep America Beautiful ad that’s been cited over and over, again, trying to funded by the manufacturers by McDonald’s, and coke and all those folks. And really trying to get people to feel like, okay, this is a personal littering problem. And it’s been super successful. And a lot of what we need to do, like you said, is to go further upstream.

Because consumers shouldn’t be on the hook for figuring out very complicated packaging, or, you know, in the situation of the coffee shop we were talking about, you have to go out of your way to ask for, for here cup, we need to make this easier, we need to make this more convenient for people. And that really is on the restaurants, on the retailers and on the manufacturers. And so that’s a concept that we call producer responsibility. Also, just kind of polluter pays.

And, you know, I mentioned the example of the beverage containers earlier, when you go buy a soda, you don’t have to think about it, no matter what brand you buy. If it’s an A P T bottle, and HDPE jug, and aluminum cans or glass bottle, it’s recyclable, then your job as the consumers to make sure it ends up in your blue bin or ends up back at the takeback.

Right? It’s, well it’s classic market economics is that people who create an externality or as they say, or a cost like that should pay for the cost of of what they’re created. And if that’s pollution, then they should pay for the cost of it. Why should I, as a taxpayer consumer, essentially bear the cost for the company that is creating a polluting device?

It doesn’t make any sense. I mean, we need to go upstream, and the party that is creating the polluting materials should pay for it and pay the true cost. So that then they may change their ways. If if that’s the case, maybe you could tell us about some of the other packaging bills that are on the horizon, both ones that may still pass and maybe some of the ones that didn’t pass.

Yeah. So a couple other bills are part of this, what we’re calling the circular economy package. One of them is AB 1276, by Wendy Korea, which sort of came out of a big issue that arose and pandemic, you know, as people got more and more takeout, you get so much other stuff with your takeout. So you get, you know, plastic forks and knives and you get napkins and all this other stuff you don’t need at home. And so this bill would basically just say that, you have to ask for those things.

They’re not going to be included by default. So if you’re going to eat in the park, sure, grab your disposable cutlery and go eat in the park. But if you’re getting it delivered to your house, you don’t need that. And I’m guessing that everybody else is like me and has a gigantic drawer full of disposable cutlery. It’s a pretty common experience that my dad has a lot of care for sure what other bills that are on the horizon.

Another bill that we’re working on is about refillable bottles. So again, going back to reuse as higher on the hierarchy than recycling. Let’s go back to refill some bottles, we don’t have to crush everything and recycle it. And there’s some great companies based in California who want to make this into a business want to take beer bottles and wine bottles and wash them and sanitize them and put them back into the stream of commerce. And so the bill would make that process eligible for funding under the state’s recycling program. Because right now, recycling is eligible for funding but reuse is not.

Oh, that definitely has a lot of benefit because you think of all the energy that goes into to recycling something and then creating a new product, there’s there’s a tremendous energy saving if we don’t have to do that.

Yeah. And then you mentioned bills that did not pass, I think the most notable of those was AB 1371, by Laura Friedman, which was about e commerce packaging. So when you order stuff online, and it gets shipped to you, basically was the requirement that E retailers not used on recyclable packaging.

So instead of the, like plastic pouches, and packing peanuts and stuff like that, they would have to use fiber and craft paper and other recyclable alternatives. As a great bill, I think it’ll be they’ll have to pass at some point, even though it failed this year. I think that that’s unavoidable in the future.

What was the margin of between passage and non passage on this bill, the E commerce bill,

I believe it came three or four votes short, it was very, very close. That’s, you know, out of 80 members of the State Assembly, you know, as a general rule, that the legislature can be a conservative body in the sense that, you know, not in the political sense, but in the sense that new ideas take a few years to percolate through the process of we will get used to them.

And this was a new idea. I frankly, think it got really far given that it was a brand new idea. And given how much opposition there was, from the various trade associations for the tech companies, for the various people who make anything. And there’s opposition from all sorts of groups.

Well, we all know from getting ecommerce packages, just the amount of waste that goes on in just sending a small product, they usually have five times as much packaging is that the product actually contains, which is just an insane amount of waste.

Yeah, and it’s, you know, there are alternatives that they’re using in other countries. I believe Amazon in India has completely switched to craft paper there and use any plastic packaging at all in their shipping. So it is doable, it is definitely doable.

Well tell us in the next year, three years, five years, 10 years, 20 years. Where’s Where are we going as a state and hopefully leading the country and the rest of the world? To have a cleaner environment? What are the things that you see on Horizon? Now we’re going to be back in, you know, in just a minute, but I wanted to get you started on that. And maybe you can give us a few things that you’re focused on in the next year to to make a change.

Yeah, well, maybe shifting a little bit from what we have been talking about. I think we don’t spend enough time thinking about the organic waste. So food scraps, yard trimmings, and organic waste makes up two thirds of what goes into landfills. And, you know, we get very fixated on some of these things like plastics and other materials. But it’s such a waste of resources to be putting organic wastes into landfills. So I think that is really the focus for the next few years in my mind. Well,

you’re listening to KABC 790. This is Matt Matern, your host of Unite and Heal America and Nick Lapis, the Director of Advocacy of Californians Against Waste is our guest. And we’ll be talking to Nick more about how we can change California in the coming years to make it a cleaner and greener place. Back in just a minute to talk with Nick more.

You’re listening to Unite and Heal America.This is Matt Matern, your host and guest is Nick Lapis, of California Against Waste. And Nick getting back to the organic waste problem that we have here in California and what we can do about it, and then maybe pivoting to where we where do you see things going over the next five to 20 years?

Yeah, I mean, I think the organic waste problem is one that doesn’t get enough attention. Like I said, two thirds of the garbage that we send to landfills every year is organic waste. And it seems harmless, right? Because it’s just okay, what’s what’s an apple core going to do to the environment, but in landfills, there’s no oxygen and so the the stuff in landfills rots anaerobically and it releases methane.

And without getting into a whole science conversation. Basically, methane is one of the strongest gases for greenhouse gas impacts. And it’s what’s called a short lived climate pollutants, meaning it delivers its entire impact in a 12 year period, as opposed to co2, which lingers in the air for for decades, and continues to provide an impact.

So if we want to address the impacts of climate change, and actually avert some of the impacts of climate change, we have to tackle the what’s called the short lived climate pollutants, that’s methane, black carbon. Some refrigerants, some other gases as well. And so again, so you have this apple core that seems totally innocent. When it rots without oxygen in a landfill, it releases methane. And we have rules requiring landfills to try to capture as much of that as they can.

But there’s only so much you can do with a, you know, 500 acre hole in the ground, right, like methane is going to find ways to escape. And so we and a lot of other NGOs have advocated for years that really the only way to reduce those emissions is to avoid creating them to begin with by diverting that material. And so if you take that same apple core, you mix it with some yard trimmings, you compost it.

You can compost it aerobically, so you’re turning it to keep oxygen flowing, it does not become methane any longer becomes CO2, and it becomes soil right becomes compost. And that finished product is super valuable for for agriculture. It’s a source of nutrients, but it also builds stronger soils that can then withstand droughts and floods.

It’s just a spongier soil, which anybody who gardens can tell you the impact of applying compost. But it just seems so wasteful, you know, especially this one right now we’re sitting in the middle of this drought is the second major drought in a few years. And the solution for that to save our agriculture is currently being placed in landfills where it’s contributing to climate change.

So tell us a little bit about the composting law that is coming into effect here in California and, and how is it going to be kind of play out in real time?

Yeah, so in 2016, the legislature passed SB 1383, which was the final in a series of laws about organic waste, basically, giving the state recycling agency authority to require statewide composting. For folks in the Bay Area, I think you have pretty broad listenership. But for folks in the Bay Area, that seems super second nature, they’ve had composting at their house forever, they put their food scraps in with their GreenWaste.

And you know, and it gets taken away and gets composted for folks in Sacramento, in in the Los Angeles area. And, you know, a lot of Southern California, it’s a very foreign concept. And so we’re basically hoping to replicate what has been successfully done in the Bay Area statewide. And the regulations go into effect January 1 of next year.

So if you live, for example, in the city of Sacramento, you should have gotten a notice from the city in the past couple of weeks, announcing that beginning of the year, you can start putting your food scraps in with the green waste, and the city is going to compost it. And we’re hoping that statewide that’ll be the case that everybody will be able to have access to composting service, at home at work when they’re out and about, sort of the only way it works is if it’s if it becomes as ingrained as recycling does.

And there’s some other really cool parts of the law as well. There are requirements for food recovery. So taking edible food and keeping it from becoming waste, making sure that everything that can be donated to hungry people does get donated to hungry people. There are various other elements as well, in that law, it’s hopefully going to be a model for the rest of the country.

Well, certainly, we’ve worked with an organization food finders, which takes food that might have been disposed of and or wasted and redistributed to people who are in need. And there’s just so much food waste that occurs in our country. It’s really staggering. So anything we can do do to prevent that food from getting wasted and finding itself into hands that are in need. That’s, that’s a great benefit.

And then you ask, you know what I see as the future? I’m gonna give you an optimistic answer, I think we’re going to finally turn the tide on some of these problems and start moving towards solutions, where the manufacturers are going to be responsible for transitioning products to be more recyclable, less toxic, and to help fund the infrastructure to deal with them at the back end. I think the fact that that the overseas countries don’t want our garbage anymore, has sort of forced a reckoning in the US.

And in California, specifically, in terms of dealing with our own garbage that we generate. And by forcing that reckoning, I think something’s got to give. And the manufacturers need to take a more active role in redesigning their products. And then, you know, similarly with the organic waste, I’m really excited about the launch of this program. I see it as a potentially total game changer for the state.

So I’m optimistic. You know, it’s a little hard to be optimistic when you’re facing really well funded opposition in the state legislature with an army of lobbyists on the other side. But, you know, I’d say that the public is with us. And I would say for the most part of the legislature is with us as well. So it’s a matter of when not if, well, I appreciate the great work that you’re doing up there with the legislature, I’ve heard a few things I’d kind of like to get your comment about its terms of their, like robotic systems that they’re using to sort out the trash more effectively, so that we can kind of discern what is recyclable and do a better job of recycling it.

Whether that is going to play a role in in this process. And also on the organic waste front. Where’s it going after they’re going to collect it? Is it going to go to the farmers? Or how are they going to distribute? What should be a very substantial amount of composted material?

Yeah. So on your first question on the robotics, I definitely think that’s going to be a big part of the future. You just, you know, the pace at which a robotic system trained by AI can pick out different materials and put them in different streams. Just, it’s not even close to, you know, the pace of humans. And so it just seems like it’s inevitable that we’re going to go in that direction. A lot of the sorting facilities that handle recyclables are already fairly automated.

So they have things like magnets, and Eddy currents and density separators and optical sorters. That are, it’s actually really cool. It’s like a big Willy Wonka machine where you throw in recyclables and things get shot with pneumatic air, you know, here and getting pulled by magnets there. And if you’ve ever had a chance to take a tour, or if you’ve never had chance to get tour, you should definitely try to do that. So it’s already fairly automated.

There are still a lot of people who stand on the lines to get contaminants to, you know, deal with items that are not as easy to handle. But the robotics will take on, I think, a greater role there. And then, as far as your second question about whether organics will go, yeah, ideally, we will be building composting infrastructure. And then taking that finished compost and using an agriculture.

You know, we have such a demand in California. I’ve heard anecdotally I’ve heard people say that are not trees alone could take every single scrap of compost we could produce. Not even thinking about all the row crops and and the use of compost for things like carbon farming and building grazing opportunities that are sequestering carbon. A lot of other uses as well. I think we have a ton of demand in California. And it’s about getting the material out of the landfill.

Well, a lot of interesting stuff. I’d love to have a chance to follow up with you on Nick lap as Director of Advocacy California Against Waste. It’s been a pleasure having you on the show and you have a great team there too. You got Dr. Amy Gilson, PhD from Harvard as policy manager and Mark Murray executive directors drafted many of solid waste and recycling laws in California.

So doing great work. Thanks again, Nick, for being on the show and we look forward to having you back some other time.

Thanks a lot, Matt.

You’ve been listening to Unite and Heal America and KABC 790. Have a wonderful Fourth of July weekend. We’ll be talking with you soon.

As you may know your host Matt Matern of Unite and Heal America is also the founder of Matern Law Group, their team of experienced employment consumer and environmental attorneys are dedicated to leveling the playing field by giving everyone access to the highest quality legal representation contact 844 MLG for you, that’s 844 MLG for you or 84465449688446544968.